Sociology Professor Featured In TV Movie 'Forgotten Sins'

An ABC-TV movie Thursday, March 7, exploring the concept of recalled
memory features the work of sociology professor Richard Ofshe protrayed by
actor William Devane.

Ofshe, an expert in recovered memory and false confession, has nothing but
praise for the work of Devane and the show "Forgotten Sins." "The movie is
terrific," he said.

In the Bay Area, the movie airs at 9 p.m. on Channel 7. It co-stars John Shea
and Bess Armstrong.

The dramatization is based on a true story, but everyone's name but Ofshe's is
changed. "I had enough input that we kept it realistic," said Ofshe, who gets a
"production consultant" credit.

Although ABC only acknowledges that the story is "based on published accounts,
police records...and court documents," Ofshe said the story is based on the
Olympia, Wash., case of Paul Ingram, a respected deputy sheriff who is accused
by his daughters of sexual assault.

Ingram, who initially denied the charges, eventually admitted not only to
crimes against his daughters but to a series of bizarre accounts of abuses and
satanic horrors.

All of this came about, said Ofshe, after "the misuse of influence by
interrogators" that "recovered" false memories.

In the film, Ofshe is called in by prosecutors when things began to grow very
odd and they needed a solid, reliable expert to verify it all. But that
backfires.

Devane as Dr. Ofshe "comes in and untangles the whole thing. It is amazing a
network would have the guts to show this," said the real professor.

At one point, the Ofshe character is shown at a college campus but it doesn't
resemble Berkeley and, in fact, Berkeley is never mentioned in the movie.

In the real case, Ofshe said the evidence is clear that Ingram did not do any
of the hateful things he now thinks he did, but by pleading guilty he was
sentenced to 20 years in prison without a trial.

A great deal of Ofshe's current work is in the area of false confessions, and
he frequently testifies in trials across the country.

"False confession ranks third after perjury and eyewitness error as a cause of
wrongful convictions in American homicide cases," Ofshe said in an extensive
profile by the New York Times Magazine last summer.

The Thursday movie is the second time Ofshe's work has been dramatized. The
first movie was based on his Pulitzer Prize winning work with editors of the
Point Reyes Light exposing the abusive goings-on at the Marin-based Synanon
Foundation.

A social psychologist who has been a member of the Berkeley faculty since
1967, Ofshe's lastest book is "Making Monsters: False Memories, Psychotherapy
and Sexual Hysteria," co-authored with Ethan Watters.